New Mentor requirements

[Fluffernuff]

this is all just a thorny situation, without a clear cut answer if it's positive and negative. and the split that already existed is just being barfed back up to the surface again.

the main issue is the NN (say what you will about it) is currently the only way for mentors who actually want to mentor can interact with, network with, and reach out or help new players actually and actively looking for it.

no, you do not need a crown to help, sure. but I honestly challenge you to go out and go talk to anyone randomly in cities or towns with a sprout icon unsolicited. Send a whisper to any/everyone. Take your crown off. Spam the shout chat.

You'll reach some people, but you are going to get ALOT of people on trial that cant respond. people who dont want some random stranger talking to them and calling them new. youre going to get met with alot of silence at best. I can promise that. you WILL reach far less people than simply lurking in the NN.

what i menan to say with that rant is NN is a very invaluable tool for mentors, regardless of whatever evidence or anecdotes exist to the contrary. and without it, a mentor can do NOTHING within their own power to actually be a mentor.


Which makes things more thorny with the requirements, you dont want people who havent spent enough time in game to know the basics being in a position where they can spread outright lies, simply because they dont know the answer. However, you dont want to make mentorship an exclusive club, either. It's a very dystopian dream to think that limiting something to only the elite will cultivate a sense of comradery and humility. that actually IS the elephant in the room right now, isn't it? "burget king crowns"?

so while we have no say over what SE chooses to present to us, we as a community need to come to a consensus:


Do you want mentors to be exclusive and inherently "superior" in some sense and be a guiding hand through experience, skill, and ability?

Or do we want mentors to be "just the same" as anyone else, and are just something to throw sprouts at?



....because frankly, they are mutually exclusive to eachother

[SturmChurro]

I had to log in after a month or so of not logging in more or less to give my thoughts here on this.

I am glad about the requirements. 1500 commendations isn't too easy to get, veteran players should have this easily. I have well over the new amount, so it doesn't effect me (even if I wanted to become one again). This should cut down a bit on the particularly awful "mentors", but I think it should be more strict. Maybe even more, commendation requirements, and other, maybe new adjustments. Still, I don't think there is any salvaging of the current system, it would still be best off being shut down entirely, in my opinion.

[RyuSaarva]

you don't need skill to be a mentor, you need knowledge or the will to help people so you google the answer, if the mentor requirement take a lot of time then you should have some knowledge about the game so you can answer how to unlock palace of the dead or does the game have a transmog system questions, people don't ask raiding related questions.

[SturmChurro]

A commendation requirement on paper means that this player has reached quite a few commendations, so they must be doing something right to receive praise in this form from other players. In essence a high commendation requirement is a good idea. Doesn't really work exactly this way in practice however. Veteran players have most likely already accumulated more than the required amount from just passively doing various content without going above and beyond in any way over the years.

you don't need skill to be a mentor, you need knowledge or the will to help people so you google the answer, if the mentor requirement take a lot of time then you should have some knowledge about the game so you can answer how to unlock palace of the dead or does the game have a transmog system questions, people don't ask raiding related questions.

You don't even need to be a mentor to answer the simple related questions. There should just be a general new player chat channel. They really should just close the system. In my opinion, even a high end content mentor is equally useless. At that point a player looking for help into that kind of content would be better off getting help from other means, such as video or written guides.

[SunAurel]

I'd like to bring up a few things.
I'm a mentor on shivas NN and I'd say we are doing a good job in general regarding new players. Most leaflings don't want to leave the chat at all because forming communities is extremely easy, as is finding friends. 80% of my friend list is made out of former sprouts I've mentored and who did not want to leave NN because it has become their most important social community and after they leave, they try to get crafting mentor asap to return.

Since they immediately went from sprout to mentor they barely have experience to mentor others and can't answer a lot of basic questions and haven't had much experience when it comes to content.

A general chat would be very good, but yes it has to be regulated somehow. I honestly think that starting with lvl 70 you should be able to sign up for one general chat. That way, sprouts can form ties in the novice chat while they are novices and keep those once they are out of the chat without a linkshell. The thing with NN is that there are always new people coming an, so it's always fresh.

Since there are no RMT bots at lvl 70 they can't sign up for that.

As for moderation they could introduce a "moderator" role with harsh requirements. 3k Comms or whatever, those are the people who would be able to kick and moderate the chat but reports against them for unjust kicking would be immediately forwarded to a GM. Or there could be a "request GM" button that notifies a GM. 5 reports for unjust kicking and they can't become moderator for a while.
It's not ideal, I know, there is always some sort of power imbalance when it comes to letting your own community moderate itself.

This chat would also have clear guidelines like no trade chat, no FC advertisements, etc.

This would at least somehow offer an alternative to linkshells who -imo- are pretty flawed and way too small and static and give People a chance to socialize.

I'd also be up for monthly elections of moderators since I know at least 10 people in the NN who are always online and do great work when things get out of hand.

[RoyalBeef]

As for moderation they could introduce a "moderator" role with harsh requirements.

Oh god please no, I can already imagine the kind of personality a position like that would attract. Mods should be SE employees only.
As for self moderation of communities: Only way to handle that is open world pvp. Didn't like what someone said? Go and shut them up, or get rekt and deal with it ^^

[SunAurel]

Oh god please no, I can already imagine the kind of personality a position like that would attract. Mods should be SE employees only.
As for self moderation of communities: Only way to handle that is open world pvp. Didn't like what someone said? Go and shut them up, or get rekt and deal with it ^^

Yeah the moderation is the most difficult part to figure out. You can't have them unmoderated because unchecked toxicity without someone being present to kick if necessary would run rampart, but community moderation has the power imbalance thing going on. It's really hard.
Another thing would be increasing linkshell capacity to at least 500 People

[SunAurel]

For some reason I can't edit my previous post on mobile. Honestly the community features need a huge overhaul, this includes free companies, group activities, etc. There should also be a way to open a separate chat window for a /tell or a temporary new tab .
A better way to organize your friend list, get notified when someone changes their name, stuff like that.

Some sort of pinboard in the party finder section where you see short messages your friends (and only your friends) left there like "running roulette in 20 minutes hmu" or "anyone wanna do treasure maps?" So you can just casually announce to your entire friend list "hey anyone wanna do something?" Without having to write them all seperately and without being in a common linkshell

[Shougun]

For some reason I can't edit my previous post on mobile. Honestly the community features need a huge overhaul, this includes free companies, group activities, etc. There should also be a way to open a separate chat window for a /tell or a temporary new tab .
A better way to organize your friend list, get notified when someone changes their name, stuff like that.

Some sort of pinboard in the party finder section where you see short messages your friends (and only your friends) left there like "running roulette in 20 minutes hmu" or "anyone wanna do treasure maps?" So you can just casually announce to your entire friend list "hey anyone wanna do something?" Without having to write them all seperately and without being in a common linkshell

If you request desktop version (option usually found in your mobile app's menu bar, for my android it's three stacked dots at the top right) you can gain access to the edit button again. Not sure if you'll have this issue but for me words with ' in it will gain slashes sometimes when I go to edit them though so be careful of that. Like "What's that?" turns into "What'/s that?" (at the press of edit, mean you can remove it before saving but it's kind of annoying lol).

Would love to see a FC update :3. Was thinking a Doma Reconstruction project for a FC with elements of Dark Cloud could be really fun and exciting. For people who didn't play dark cloud the tl;dr is that you get to find NPCs in the wild and then organize out their houses with certain bonuses based on where you put them. Very node/grid based which is good for saving memory, and the concept I think would transfer fairly well in terms of benefits (finding different npcs and gaining their bonuses and who you put down/etc).

[SturmChurro]

I don't think a chat moderator is a good idea. You just end up with a situation like from what I have heard about in warframe. Community moderation of this kind would just be authoritarian, not to mention completely subjective based on the whims of whatever particular mod. Not unlike SE's own moderation come to think of it, but at least those are actual employees. The 'Novice Network' already shows this issue in full force in many areas.